Cast In Iron
by OP INTENSIFY
Summary: He's seven years old when men in large, white coats knock on their door.


He's never known hunger. For as long as he remembers, there has always been a plate at the table for him, even if it was the only one there. He never hesitates to climb up a chair taller than him. There is nothing he cannot overcome, no challenge unsurpassed, and it is the gentle words of encouragement from Mama that help him reach incredible heights. Other children tell him the factory dumpster isn't really that tall, but he still feels like a giant when they twist their necks to look up at him. And he never, ever, starts eating until Mama and Papa have taken their seats at the table. Papa says a young man must show consideration for his peers and wait until everyone is ready. Mama says it works out best when everyone begins and ends their meal together so they can all speak freely.

So when Papa isn't ready one evening, he sits and waits.

Mama watches him from the counter and asks, "Aren't you hungry, Vitya?"

He scrapes a heel against the metal leg of his chair. He tries not to stare at his plate and ignores the growling of his rebellious stomach. "Where is Papa?"

His mother puts down the knife in her hands and wipes them on her apron. "Papa is it at work. He'll be coming home later now." Her hand slips over his and she squeezes. "Go on. Eat."

So he does, but the table is quiet and his meal sits uncomfortably at the bottom of his stomach when he's done.

He tells himself he doesn't mind, that he understands why Papa stays at the foundry well after lamps light up the streets. He tries to convince himself he doesn't mind hearing the door click shut in the early morning hours, or that he stops seeing Papa at breakfast as well. His father only finds time for him on the too few days he's not needed at work. He wants to play outside like they did before, clambering over asphalt as his Papa growls behind the metal bars of a jungle gym. But now his father can barely make it to the door without yawning, so they spend his free time in their small living room. There is a book in his hand from the library and his father snores loudly, but Viktor doesn't mind reading on his lap. And that he readily believes.

Sometimes he wanders down the winding streets of Zaun when the school day ends and his feet carry him to the Likhachov foundry where his father works. The windows are too high to look through, but he sees enough as sparks fly just over the rim. Through the brick walls he can hear the groan of metal and whir of machines, feel the steady thrum of a living engine that produces great metal beams with a belch of smoke and fire.

He's seven years old when men in large, white coats knock on their door.

Mama drops the screwdriver in her hand and stumbles away from the radiator sputtering against the wall. The way she fiddles with her faded apron as her fingers make awkward spasms causes him to chew lightly at his lower lip. His mother looks from the door, then to him, then back to the door. He does not argue when she tells him to go outside, that he can finish his homework later. Her hands are shaking as he is guided by the shoulders out the back. Mama chokes when a second series of knocks roll through the house. He walks around the block with little else to do, making a point to avoid his own front door. He waits for the streetlamps to turn on before making a slow return home.

Mama is waiting in the kitchen when he makes it back home. Her breaths are short and shallow, eyes glassy and red. She sniffs loudly as he inches closer. Warm, strong, safe arms slip around him and he's pulled into her lap. Mama's mouth opens but nothing comes out. She tries several times, forcing out quiet squeaks and not much else. Viktor does his best to wrap both of his arms around her waist. Mama holds him tighter. He notices for the first time she is holding a wrinkled slip of paper when it scrapes his ear. He doesn't ask what it is, there's no need; the way her white knuckles tremble around it tells him its bad and that is all he wants to know.

His father never comes home.

School progresses quickly and his room becomes a mess of motors, circuit boards, and batteries. Wires form a complex web across his floor that pulse like veins whenever he adjusts his desk lamp. Studies of various anatomical parts hang from every wall; arms, legs, organs, and bones create a puzzle of flesh. It's never quiet anymore. There is always something clicking, humming, whirring, and buzzing in the privacy of his room. Viktor makes a world of living metal to fill the silence. It's nothing like the foundry with its titanic pulse and sweltering breath, but it's as close as he can get, and that's enough.

His mother starts working at a local office, "savings for a rainy day," she says. She leaves before he gets up for school and returns just before dinner. Viktor makes sure their meal is ready by the time she arrives. They wash the dishes together every evening, discussing their day as bubbles pop in the sink.

One night as the last plate is placed in the drying rack he stares at the faucet and says, "I miss Papa."

The water continues to run as neither speaks. With one hand his mother shuts it off and with the other she pulls him close. Quietly, to hide the strain in her voice, she says, "I do too."

At fifteen he graduates. A world of opportunity stretches before him and he can hardly imagine where he might end up. Dolshmein College has an attractive array of robotics courses, but the labs at Zaun Metropolitan offer the cutting edge in emerging techmaturgy. With the right scholarships, and perhaps a loan or two, he could even apply to the Rochester Academy of Piltover. Viktor's still puzzling over the most efficient course of action when his mother calls him to the kitchen.

The room feels so much smaller when he steps through the doorway. The wallpaper has lost much of its color and the tile has been rubbed down to a dull mockery of its once pristine sheen. His mother sits at the little table they shared for so many years, a black lunch pail held in both hands.

It's his fathers.

She pushes it towards him with a smile on her face, eyes filled to the brim with tears. Reverently, he opens the lid to discover a thick roll of banknotes wrapped together. It may not see him through the end of his education, but it is more than enough for a promising start. He can barely speak past the tightness in his throat, but his mother speaks for him.

"For a rainy day, Vitya."

They laugh as he scrambles around the table to wrap her in an unsteady hug, the lunch pail held tight beneath one arm. She whispers words of encouragement into his ear just as she always has, and Viktor believes he can change the world.

He's twenty-two and on his way to present an automated intelligence at the Metropolitan when a malfunctioning carriage throws him across the street.

With the best medical care he can afford recovery lasts three weeks, but restoring his leg is well beyond the limits of his meager wealth. The first steps are painful and he can barely manage to shuffle around but Mama squeezes his hand and he tries again. With days of practice he learns to anticipate the fluctuations of his unreliable knee. The hospital offers him a cane nonetheless. Viktor nearly matches his former speed with the rod's assistance, though his gait has become a terribly awkward hobble.

Eventually the fire in his leg fades to a dull ache that is content to occasionally reveal itself after a long day or restless night, but the traitorous knee keeps him from ever letting go of his cane.

Listening to the whir of an artificial limb turning the crank of a projector, he stares at diagrams penned from a previous study. The light stutters in the darkness of his room and fails before the metal arm quickly resumes cranking the projector. He wants to walk as he once did, not out of any vanity, but to simply prove he can. What good did studying the human body do if it only helped him create synthetic replicas? There was a connection between natural and artificial, he only had to look.

The first brace is clumsy. It weighs him down and causes his leg to ache after an hour of walking. The second moves with a natural grace but can barely hold him up. Viktor tears through designs and tests prototypes with wild abandon. Many are filed away as serviceable reminders of failure while some find their way into new iterations. Each test brings him one step closer to taking a literal one free of painful limitations. When he straps the final design on, Viktor knows he has found his solution.

He's thirty-four when the city requests his expertise in creating a line of waste-disposal automatons.

He's thirty-six when it's decided he's no longer needed.

They lied to him. They gave him praise for his contributions to the most promising collaboration organized by Zaun. But when the mind he had so carefully constructed proved to be much, much more than merely intelligent, Viktor was abandoned. Worse, he had been denied recognition for his efforts while others claimed his work as their own. Newsreels proudly proclaimed the birth of Runeterra's first sentient construct of techmaturgy.

The hole in his heart opened twenty-nine years ago yawns cavernously wide, and Viktor feels hollow. He had been cheated, abused for reasons he couldn't hope to explain, and unceremoniously dumped back where he had been found.

In the confines of the new apartment he had moved himself and his mother, the incessant chatter of machines becomes deafening. The metal click, click, clicks burrow into his skull like mechanical maggots, squirming through his thoughts. Who could he trust if fellow man took from him just as easily as the world did? It wasn't right, wasn't fair. He had worked for years developing the mind now guiding the steps of a certain steam golem. They left him with nothing.

He needed clarity of mind, and only work brought him the peace he so desperately desired. Days grow into weeks within the walls of his modest laboratory, but steady productivity lightens his spirits, helps him forget the sting of betrayal.

Little more than a month rolls by when the Headsman's Pride is paraded before flashing cameras.

He hardly believes his eyes as designs he knows by heart clank together in some hideous perversion of their true intent. It isn't possible; he refuses to accept the possibility of such unscrupulous deception. Viktor pores through countless folders holding documents from every previous experiment, but the folder he is searching for in particular holds no promises.

In fact, it's quite empty.

His eyes close on the laboratory and when he opens them he's greeted by a scrap yard. His hands are trembling as small cuts leak blood onto the floor. His brace is in shambles, the metal twisted like broken fingers. There is an ache in his chest and the harder he tries to deny its existence the more insistent it becomes.

He hates the College of Techmaturgy.

He hates Stanwick Pididly.

Most of all, he hates himself.

He's weak for trusting them, is weak for letting their betrayal debilitate him.

No more.

He is weak, but weakness can be cured. Through iron and electricity, he could shed the faults of his birth, become more than he ever dreamed. And if the world wanted to take anything from him it would first need to pry it from his cold, metal hands.


End file.
